


After Hours

by the_antichris



Category: Old Kingdom - Garth Nix
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:49:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1094057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_antichris/pseuds/the_antichris
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lirael does some late-night research. The Disreputable Dog helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	After Hours

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ivy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ivy/gifts).



Lirael checked the slip of paper one last time. Section Five, Third Sub-Staircase, Level Seven, Room Three. The reference itself had required some tracking down, through several musty volumes; Lirael reflected, not for the first time, that the trouble with these ancient tomes of Magic was that they so often lacked proper bibliographies, let alone comprehensive indexing. Then finding the book’s location had involved a surreptitious trip to the Restricted Catalogue. Conveniently, her bracelet unlocked the Restricted Catalogue, but she'd still had to sneak past the night returns desk in order to get to it. Even past midnight, the Library never slept, only dozed a little. Books might be returned at any hour of the day or night - indeed, Lirael had, in case she was seen and challenged, one of the leather caskets the librarians used for carrying books to reshelve.

'This is more trouble than it's worth,' Lirael grumbled, though quietly, aware that sound carried up the echoing staircases.

The Disreputable Dog looked up from whatever she was sniffing - possibly a rat, most likely an unusually interesting pile of dust - and tilted her head with a doggish grin. 'Nonsense, mistress! Or don't you _want_ to learn more about Charter-skins?'

'Ask me again in the morning.' Lirael yawned.

The Dog left her dustpile and trotted up, leaning against Lirael's thigh and pushing her moist nose into Lirael's free hand. Suddenly, despite the hour, Lirael felt energised and read for any number of late nights. She wriggled her toes in sudden restlessness and stuffed the notepaper into a side pocket.

The door yielded willingly as she passed her bracelet over the centre of the locking-spell. Inside... inside, at first glance, the room looked unremarkable. Charter-smoothed stone walls, lined with wooden bookshelves turned dark with age. The only odd part was that the shelves were empty. Dust on both shelves and floor spoke of long disuse.

She left the door ajar, thoughts of emergency mice running as an undercurrent to her anticipation. It was always exciting to open a new door, and today she looked forward to the extra satisfaction of tracking down a difficult reference. The Dog, seemingly sharing her interests, whuffled happily and sniffed in several directions.

Lirael could have sworn the room was only a few yards deep, but several long steps brought her no closer to the far wall. It seemed to recede ahead of her, the walls becoming craggier and less finished, more like a cave than a room. Moving more cautiously, she touched the hilt of her dagger and looked around. No books - indeed, no shelves apart from the ones just inside the door. (Lirael was obscurely relieved to find that the door looked about the same distance away as she had come. Some parts of the Glacier, and especially the Library, did tricky things with distance, which she always found disconcerting, but this seemed to be a simple illusion at the entrance.)

The Dog's warning bark came at the same time as Lirael's Charter-sense tingled. Not with the familiar, comforting sense of order that came from the touch of Charter Magic, nor with the acrid reek of Free Magic. She felt suddenly colder, and she thought she could hear water, as though she stood next to a swift stream.

'There, Mistress!' The Dog sounded urgent, which was enough to make Lirael worry; she had learned certain things about her friend's capabilities over the past year.

The Dog's snout was pointing at the far left corner of the room, where ice had intruded, sending chunks of rock tumbling across the floor. Frozen half in and half out of the ice was a...

A _body_?

Lirael grasped the Dog's collar for support, grateful for the reassuring flow of the Charter under her fingers as much for the warmth and solidity of the Dog's shoulder against her leg. Out of habit, she tucked her hair behind her ears (although none had fallen into her eyes, since she had sensibly tied it back before leaving her room), and steadied herself to take another look.

It wore a skirt and blouse of rather peculiar cut; over these was a red waistcoat. And - yes - clipped on to the lapel was a whistle. Pockets held a notebook and several quill pens, of a type no longer used; on the belt was an empty scabbard. The dagger itself was missing, unless it was in the woman's right hand, which was hidden in the grasping ice. Cold and time had altered the colour of the skin, and she had lost almost all her hair, but...

'Dog,' said Lirael, and swallowed hard. 'I think that's a Clayr.'

The Dog growled. ' _Was_ ,' you mean. Look!'

Lirael looked. The long-dead Clayr was, unbelievably, moving.

'It's a Dead Hand?' she asked, disbelieving, numb. All young Clayr learned about the Dead in their Fighting Arts classes, but Lirael, who never expected or wished to leave the Glacier, had never expected to encounter the Dead, protected as the Glacier was behind spider-thin bridges over the rushing Ratterlin.

'A Dead Hand,' confirmed the Dog. 'I wouldn't have expected to see one here, but hadn't you better do something?'

'Do _what_?' Lirael almost wailed. The Dead Hand was tugging on its trapped arm and leg, and she thought it might be succeeding.

'For starters, a binding spell might be--' The Dog yelped as the Hand's arm came out of the ice with a shower of crystals.

Thinking more clearly now she had a defined task, Lirael pulled three marks of binding from the Charter, and welded them together with one of the stronger marks she knew, though not the master mark that she had used the day of the Stilken. She would use the master mark if she had to, but she was well aware of how close she had come to losing control of it that day. Bathed in the endless, timeless flow of the Charter, she concentrated until her mind was empty of all save the marks, which hung in space before her mind's eye, beautiful in their completeness.

Then - she didn't quite know why - instead of speaking the marks, she sang them, each a separate note and the fourth a ringing chord. The spell flashed across the space between Lirael and the Dead Hand, knocking the Hand against the ice.

The Dog barked happily. 'Excellent, Mistress! Now, perhaps a spell of banishment...'

But Lirael was already drawing out the requisite Charter Marks. Again, she sang them, and as she did, the Dog barked again, a series of joyful, puppyish yips. Almost as soon as the last note had left Lirael's lips, the Hand's body sagged, the animating spirit gone -- she hoped -- to Death and beyond.

Lirael sagged herself, almost sitting down heavily on the Dog. Though now she came to think of it, sitting down sounded like a good idea, if she went about it more sensibly, so she lowered herself to the cool, flagstoned floor, wrapping her arms around her knees.

'Dog, what was that Hand doing here?' she asked, when she had collected her thoughts. 'The Dead can't cross the river, can they? And even if they could, there are guards and sendings.'

The Dog flopped down next to Lirael's feet, resting her head thoughtfully on her tawny paws. 'They shouldn't be able to. The river flows, as ever was and will be. No, I think it... I think _she_ must have been raised here, in the Glacier. I suppose ice doesn't count as running water.'

That uncomfortable thought had never occurred to Lirael. She hoped it had occurred to some of the guards.

'But who? Raised her, I mean?'

The Dog looked thoughtful. 'The usual necromancer, I expect. Maybe not so usual, since he or she seems to have had the bright idea to sneak into the Clayr's Glacier before raising any Dead.' Neither dog nor girl spoke of how the necromancer had found a body to serve as a Hand. The dead woman was clearly wearing working clothes, not swathed in the robes Clayr used in Farewells. 'I should like to know what they meant to do, and how they slipped in. Unless the necromancer was a Clayr herself... '

A fresh, horrible thought struck Lirael, and she began to get to her feet. 'What if she's still around?'

The Dog shook her head, undoglike. 'We'd have smelled it. Besides...' She bounced to her feet, shook herself, and paced over to sniff the dead woman's hand. 'This poor woman's hundreds of years old. Any necromancer powerful enough to live that long... Well, whatever their plan was, they wouldn't have stopped at one.'

'Oh.' Somehow, Lirael didn't find that reassuring. She pressed her hand against the wall for a moment, looking everywhere but at the long-ago Clayr's body. Her gaze fell on a small chest, with a strangely dust-free book atop it; presumably the volume she had come in search of. Mechanically, she picked it up, though her research into Charter-skins now seemed distant and rather pointless. 'I suppose we'd better tell somebody, hadn't we?' Perhaps she could manage to do it by note. More likely, she would find herself in Chief Librarian Vancelle's office, explaining what she had been doing in the older levels, by herself, at midnight. She sighed, pushing away the familiar thoughts of being sent back to the Hall of Youth in disgrace.

The Dog licked her hand, with her comforting trick of seeming to know when her mistress's thoughts turned in certain directions. 'I think that would be a very good idea.'


End file.
